‘It’s a lot easier – especially for beginners’: Here’s why you should try birding in winter | CBC News

Winter might seem like a quiet time for wildlife, but for birders, it’s a season full of surprises.

With clearer views through leafless trees, it’s the ideal time to kick off Christmas bird counts in Waterloo region and Guelph.

Ethan Gosnell is the coordinator of Waterloo region’s bird count. He said he started it with his mother five years ago.

“It kind of just became a bit of a tradition,” said Gosnell.

The Christmas bird count is an annual event across North America and other parts of the world. People set out in late December or early January to look for which birds have decided to brave winter winds, to analyze how bird behaviour changes over time.

“They’re all citizen science projects, which is super cool because a lot of bird research is done by scientists,” said Gosnell. “There’s a lot of knowledge and a lot of data that can be used from just regular everyday birders.”

Gosnell said there’s lots of bird species that can only be found in the summer, but it’s the same for winter.

“There’s a lot of duck species that come in winter on the Grand River,” he said, like surf scoters, mergansers, and eiders.

He said other birds “like snowy owls that are definitely more uncommon,” are now easier to find in the winter, too.

Guelph’s Christmas bird count coordinator, Mike Cadman said his group was lucky enough to see a snowy owl this year.

“Some of the Arctic nesting birds come down in the winter time,” he said.

“As the climate warms, the falls are extending longer and more birds are staying around for the winter,” said Cadman. “Lakes and rivers are freezing up less than they used to or later than they used to.”

Cadman said blue birds, which are common in summer but not winter, can be found sticking around through the colder months, too.

For the Guelph bird count, Cadman said the group fans out over a 12 kilometre radius to try and count as many bird species as possible.

It’s a tradition he said dates back to 1900.

“There was a tradition of going out and shooting as many birds as you could around Christmas,” he said.

Cadman said in response to that, a man named Frank Chapman decided it would be better to count and identify them instead.

“Things like chickadees, nuthatches, creepers, kinglets,” said Earley. “Lots of small birds have different strategies of being able to survive the winter.”

He said while there isn’t the same diversity of species in the winter, they are often easier to see because of the reduced foliage and tree canopy.

“It’s a lot easier – especially for beginners,” he said.

The key for these birds isn’t to keep warm necessarily, he said, but to find and store enough food to last until spring.